Chapter Three
She's home by nine o'clock, quietly tip-toeing in after realizing her husband had already gone to bed.
Approaching the dinner table, she lifts the silver lid of the plate cover, seeing steak, some asparagus and a baked potato before quietly replacing it…
It's when the lamp in the formal living room snaps on, capturing her attention as it illuminates the face of her father that she nearly jumps out of her own skin — her mind already riddled with enough guilt tonight.
"Ah!" A sharp but short scream leaves her throat.
Her hand rests over her pounding heart, taking in deep breaths as he offers a warm smile. "I forgot that you and mom were coming to stay for a little while." She admits before it hits her fully.
Oh, shit.
The house isn't ready, the groceries, her mental capacity to handle her parents…
"We just got in about an hour ago — Dyess fed us, don't you worry." He keeps the smile on his face despite his daughter's appearance.
Exhausted and clearly scatter-brained.
The same as she was when he and her mother visited for the night a little over a month ago.
She had crept in well into the middle of the night, heels in hand, skirt on backwards, makeup smeared, hair a mess…exhausted.
He had kept his mouth shut, then, and he does so, now.
"I'm gonna go to bed. I've got a big day tomorrow." She informs him quietly, kissing his cheek.
"Goodnight, dear." He replies sweetly, watching her disappear behind her bedroom door, the both of them huffing out heavy breaths once they're out of sight of each other.
"Everything alright?" Dyess asks, still awake, book in hand as Tawny steps to him, crawling onto the bed and on top of him to lay on his chest. "Did Snow go easy on you?" He adds, not taking his eyes off his book.
She wants to scoff at the question.
Snow never goes easy on her — or anybody for that matter. In any aspect of anything.
"I still have a job. He told me we'd go over it tomorrow." She mumbles, closing her eyes, deciding to leave off the part where he had her backed against the door, leaving her with no option but to dig her nails into her palms and bite her teeth into her tongue to keep from getting on her knees, falling at his feet.
"What about your aunt?" He asks it cautiously, eyeing her reaction.
"She just sat there and let me ramble on. She didn't say a word to me until I went to go and she told me we'd discuss it in depth tomorrow."
"So…meet with Snow tomorrow, and your Aunt?" Dyess asks, terrified at the agenda himself.
But he knows Tawny will face it with a stiff lip.
She'd always been the better of the two of them to pull up her bootstraps and just push through.
"They're going to rake me over coals, Dy." She whispers, dreading the lectures.
"They're like cats that bat around a mouse until it dies but never actually eat it. They're bored and need someone to pick on. This time it's you." He mumbles, sighing out as he turns a page. "It'll pass once they get bored again and move on to a new victim."
"I don't know what to do. It's easy to fix things when you know what needs to be fixed. All the problems start from nothing, it seems." She thinks it aloud. "I started doing this because I believe in the Games. I believe they're good, and justified. Everything I've done has been for our girl, but this last year…especially these last months…"
Trailing off, she swallows the lump in her throat.
"You have two of our best Gamemakers on your side. If they weren't, you'd be gone already. Just take a breath, think of tomorrow as a new day, and let it be for tonight so you can get some rest. Alright?"
She nods, accepting his lips pressing to hers but she recoils when his hand finds the small of her back and tries to drift lower.
"Not tonight, Dy, I'm really stressed." She sighs out, earning a chuckled out, "That's what I'm trying to help relieve."
"I don't need anything relieved right now with my mother in the next room." She grasps his face in her hands. "Okay?"
He nods, smiling gently at her.
"Okay." He nods, to which she kisses him one quick time before heading to the bathroom to shower, and go to bed.
The next morning, Dr. Gaul and Coriolanus stare at the empty syringe that's perched in a labeled, air tight bag, staring right back at them.
"I want to keep this between us for now, Mr. Snow. I've ordered a discreet investigation into her other failed cases." She says, her voice shaky with anger and irritation.
"…It was in his office?" Snow asks, lowly, studying the evidence before him.
"In the trash. The DNA on the needle matches that of the mutt Tawny was working on just yesterday."
"Liver failure due to too much iron." He echoes what Dr. Crane's students had told him the day before.
"Implemented by her own husband, apparently." Dr. Gaul mutters. "More than likely not the first of many of her cases he has sabotaged." She adds.
"Have you devised his punishment?" Snow hisses, anger cradling his words as blue eyes nearly puncture the evidence itself from how hard he's glaring at it.
Volumnia doesn't speak a word.
He slowly looks at her, letting out a breath.
"Dr. Gaul." He says in a grit, his mind running wild with his own vivid reprisal.
At first it's the basic instinct to punch him until his face caves in, yelling, screaming, cursing…
Then it turns to more appropriate manors of revenge.
Crane didn't outright slaughter mutts or burn down any plants that his wife had tried her hardest to create and maintain, no.
He was more discreet, more contrived, patient, planned…sneaky.
His mind immediately drifts to Casca Highbottom, what feels like eons ago, knowing he carefully took his last breath by Snow's will.
No.
A bloody and obvious murder wouldn't be in the cards for Dyess Crane.
Coriolanus has to play this just as Dyess is.
It wasn't that he was offended for Tawny, had it occurred to anyone else he'd still be infuriated if it possibly affected the Games in any way.
They had deadlines, statistics, test runs, meetings, a certain amount of hours in the lab that needed to be met weekly, grievous schedules and agendas to make sure all went perfectly and keep everyone on their toes and try to maintain impeccable results.
Scientists and Gamemakers alike were both on the same team. Their goal is to achieve and deliver a more entertaining and interesting Hunger Games than the year before.
And someone on the team is fucking it up for everyone — to what end, exactly?
He envies his wife?
He scorns her for being the same intelligent woman he married?
It almost makes him scoff.
Of course. He'd known this. The evidence had practically been there to anyone to see if they looked a smidgen closer at the Crane's relationship.
Tawny had confessed it in the aftermath of one of their times together.
Dyess Crane didn't marry her because he was in love with her or her intelligence.
Coriolanus furrows his brows, rolling his jaw.
" We got married because I got pregnant ," She had whispered it to him, her delicate fingers fumbling with the gold wedding band on his left hand.
Snow – in the lusty haze that followed his satisfaction that couldn't quite be quenched when it came to her – had nearly admitted that his own marriage to Livia was out of convenience.
He enjoyed her compliance, and beauty, and her ability to ask as little questions as possible. She was smart enough to have good conversations with, they shared the same opinions of Panem and how it should be.
They were compatible, so he proposed. They married a year later, and were still happy enough eight years later.
The way Tawny had spoken of her marriage, she'd been trapped for fourteen years.
Fourteen years married to Dyess Crane.
He wrinkles his nose at the thought.
He would've already taken a deep dive off of a short roof if he were her.
He never felt trapped with Livia, nor did he ever feel the need to do any extra-marital activities until the last few months of working directly with Tawny.
He feels tempted to inform her that not only did her husband marry her solely because she got pregnant, but he married her with the hopes of her staying at home and raising their child while he got to run with the big dogs.
"I want him dead." He speaks it clearly, casually.
It's not him asking permission.
It's him informing Dr. Gaul that Dyess Crane will die.
"Wait for the investigation to conclude, and then we begin our game." She says to him dreadfully, the promise of demise in her tone pulls his eyes to hers. "Until then, this debacle stays between us. Not a word of this will be mentioned during your time with her this morning."
"You want me to lie to her?"
He'd never had to before, and he liked to think she hadn't lied to him, either.
But omitting the truth…that line was thin, but not too thin for him to walk on.
"She is going to want to retrace her steps, as she always does with her failed cases. She'll order an autopsy and will receive the results and then eventually will put together that someone sabotaged her. She'll be so consumed with fury that she'll act irrationally — unbecoming — of someone in our profession." Dr. Gaul says it as if knowing full-well how her niece will react.
"I want you to keep her dumb to the idea that the man she loves is trying to make ruin of her career…of her future as a part of my Games."
I want you to keep her dumb…
Keep her distracted .
His mind roams at the thought.
It sounds like an order, one he silently wonders has creative liberties as he gets a brief picture of a few ways to keep Dyess out of Tawny's mind completely.
Go about things as usual .
He merely nods, taking in a breath as he steps from her lab.
An hour later, Snow waits impatiently for Dr. Crane, seated at his desk glancing over the past five of her failed cases — excluding the most recent.
He checks his watch, huffing out an irritated breath.
She's nearly fifteen minutes late.
Down the hall, Tawny and Dyess slowly step toward Coriolanus' office.
"…I don't want those people in my apartment, Dy." She mutters.
"Tawny, be nice, now."
"They're district."
"They've wisened up and chose correctly." He replies, optimistically.
Strabo Plinth — an inherited friend of Dyess whose dead rebel son was in the same class as Dyess' dead sister who might as well have been killed by a rebel — and his wife had been invited to dinner by Dyess and Tawny's parents…who also adored the Plinths and the ground they walked on.
"And that's why their son was hanged for conspiring with rebels out in 12?" She remarks. "Because they'd wisened up?"
He sighs out, looking around to make sure no one was paying attention to them before he stops and pulls her aside.
"I know you're still angry. I know you're still resentful, and you have every right to be. But the Plinths have been nothing but good to all of us. They can't help that they weren't born Capitol." He says quietly. "Your parents enjoy their company, I enjoy their company, and they haven't gotten the opportunity to come to our house in the fourteen years we've been married. It's long overdue." He adds, raising his brows. "I thought you'd be happy to have more people to celebrate fourteen years together with."
She exhales, rubbing her full lips together and he awaits her answer.
Ah, yes, ringing in their fourteenth anniversary with the Plinths and her parents.
There's no other way she'd rather celebrate.
"Okay." She relents, mumbling it to his amusement.
"Okay?"
Nodding, she offers a little smile as he kisses her chastely, glancing over her shoulder when they pull from one another.
She's about to turn to go when he stops her, bringing his lips back down to hers.
"Dy, I'm already late." She giggles but doesn't push him away or deny him, allowing him one last kiss before they're both breaking it.
"Good luck." He says to her with a wide grin that he wears as the blue-eyed blonde approaches them."Good morning, Mr. Snow." Dyess states, not looking away from his wife until she turns to see Coriolanus standing a few feet away, platinum curls styled perfectly, reflecting the light above their heads.
" Dyess ." Snow says cordially, digging his hands into his pockets to keep from balling them up into fists as his gaze shifts to Tawny. "Dr. Crane, you're late."
"We've had an eventful morning." Dyess interrupts, Tawny's face blushing slightly at his hint of utilizing the fact her parents had gotten up early and gone out for breakfast, leaving the two of them at home alone.
"Well, no sense in wasting more of my time." Snow blatantly blurts, stepping aside and motioning to the door of his office as he glares at Tawny despite maintaining his polite expression.
"I'll see you later, Sweetie." Dyess tells her and she nods, walking toward Snow's office.
They don't bother further entertaining the silent dick measuring contest that's happening between them, the two men turning their opposite ways and going on.
"I'm sorry." She says to Snow when he gets in his office, shutting the door behind him.
"You do realize I have every right to dismiss you and report you for tardiness, right?" He threatens in a sharp hiss.
"I didn't realize what time it was." She honestly states.
"You can't get fucked and read a clock at the same time?" He doesn't even try to disguise the root of his anger as he walks to his desk.
"Are you angry because I'm late, or because I was getting fucked?" She gives it right back to him, using the same degrading tone, her irritation matching his perfectly.
"I'm angry that I'm trying to help you, and instead of showing up on time, you screw around — quite literally — and take advantage of my grace." He speaks as if she's a clueless child.
"If you want to dismiss me and write me up, you can." She assures him. "I didn't mean to waste your time. Everyone in Panem knows that your time — above everyone else's — is so precious after all."
He grinds his teeth.
"It is, actually. Quite precious." He raises his brows. "But you know that, of course." Referring to something else entirely, and she takes in a deep breath, peeling her eyes from his.
She has to.
"Are we going to go over my cases?" She changes the subject, shifting in her seat, trying to keep her breaths under control as he opens his desk drawer and pulls the few files from it, tossing them to the desk without a word.
Sitting with a sigh and opening the first file, he thumbs through it and taps his fingertips on the heavy wood under the folder.
His blue eyes narrow as he reads over her notes, his mouth pulling downward when he realizes it's one Dr. Gaul even assisted her on.
As far as he can tell, it should have worked out…
Assuming this is one of the ones Dr. Gaul referred to being a part of the investigation they've opened, he keeps his mouth shut on it and closes it, picking up the next one.
"…Is something wrong?" Tawny asks.
He doesn't answer, scanning this one briefly before huffing out in frustration.
Fuck, Crane. You slick bastard , he thinks to himself, closing this one and opening yet another.
He wonders how far back this sabotage has been occurring.
By the time he has to close this one without offering a word to her about it, she's marching toward him and reaches for the small pile he's working through, only for him to grab her wrist, stopping her.
"None of it's even good enough for you to want to discuss it with me?" She questions.
"None of it's worth discussing when there's nothing to discuss." He replies. "It looks fine so far."
"If any of it was fine they wouldn't have failed." She retorts.
His eyes go back to the page before him, ignoring her words and releasing her wrist.
After another moment, he stands, tapping his finger on one line of writing in particular.
"Come here." He says to her.
She eagerly goes, wanting to see his finding, hoping it will help to answer the root of some of her confusion and frustration.
He steps aside for her to read over the line, leaning over his desk as she does so, her hand taking his to move it from her way.
Her dark brows furrow as she reads the sentence, then re-reads it again.
He sees the struggle on her face to make sense of what exactly he's talking about, until he lowers his lips closer to her ear and quietly, flatly states, "You used the wrong tense of 'too'."
Brown eyes meet blue, noses almost brushing together when she looks at him, over her shoulder, infuriated with his behavior.
Petty and dismissive.
She knows he doesn't care for her, nor love her, nor does he truly care about what her husband does with her or to her, but he seems curious enough when he nearly whispers out, "Does he know?"
Does he know?
Does he know I've had you in the car he bought you? In his house? In his bed?
No. Dyess didn't know.
Her head shakes slightly, plush lips parting to breathe somewhat easier but all that does is grasp ahold of his gaze.
"No." She has to speak to break his attention from her lips. "Does Livia know?"
"No."
He thinks of his sweet wife, always gentle and easy with him, so he tried to be just that with her as well.
It would be too obvious if he snapped and treated her as roughly and ravenously he treated Tawny in their time together.
"Would you like to come eat dinner with my family and the Plinths this Saturday night?"
"That sounds like torture." He doesn't hold back, needing a drink even imagining them all around a table.
His make-shift parental figures, his mistress, his wife, his enemy, and his mistress' parents.
Then he thinks of Dyess' face when he answers the door, seeing Livia and Coriolanus.
He'd pay good money to see Crane try to mask that rage.
"I'm sure it will be for everyone involved…but I'm going to need a buffer between the Plinths and my parents and Dyess is only so good for so long. You can invite your cousin since she helped her old boss with my wedding gown. Having a few other people there to hold their attention will help me not want to bang my head on the table."
He thinks about it, looking back down to the paper they're standing over.
"Philo will drop off a new case for you to work on this afternoon. Your last one before the Games." Snow moves from her, black eyelashes resting against her cheek from her briefly closed eyes. "Make sure it's somewhat successful. Meeting dismissed." He adds and she gives an acknowledging nod of her head before she moves from him, too, back to the other side of his desk to head to the door. "What time is dinner?" He asks as she reaches for the door knob, stopping in her tracks, a little hint of a smile tugging at her lips.
"Eight o'clock." She replies softly.
"I might be there. It depends on how generous I'm feeling." He admits, seeing her eyes roll before she opens the door. "Oh, Dr. Crane?"
"Yes, Mr. Snow?" She asks, raising her brows.
"Don't say a word of your new assignment to anyone. Not your students. Not even your husband. It's imperative it stays between you, myself, and Dr. Gaul."
He sees the way her brows twitch in slight confusion, her mouth pulling somewhat downward, the many questions swirling in her eyes, but all she says is, "I understand, Mr. Snow. I won't tell a soul. I promise," before she leaves his office, shutting the door behind her.
I won't tell a soul. I promise.
The same words she'd whispered when they swore their affair to secrecy before agreeing to stop.
He looks down at the folders, each one perfectly planned out, notes dated exactly, steps drawn out…and not a success in the bunch.
His mind drifts back to that syringe Gaul showed him.
Dyess could be charged with destroying Capitol property, malpractice, misconduct…Gaul would ensure he suffers more than anything and if by some abnormal chance she didn't, Snow would.